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Sources for Obtaining SIPP Microdata

SIPP microdata files can be obtained from several sources. All public use microdata files can be obtained on magnetic media or CD-ROM directly from the Census Bureau. When microdata files are obtained directly from the Census Bureau, users are provided with a full set of documentation for those files, including all currently available applicable User Notes (discussed later in this chapter). Users can also be placed on a distribution list to receive information from the Census Bureau regarding any errors found in, or revisions made to, those files, by contacting the Customer Services Branch, Administrative and Customer Services Division, at (301) 457-4100.

In addition, analysts affiliated with institutions that are members of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) can obtain all SIPP microdata from that source. Users should contact the ICPSR representative at their institutions for more information. Finally, SIPP data and documentation, as released by the Census Bureau, are not copyrighted. The data files and supporting documentation can therefore be freely copied and distributed to other users.4

There is another source of SIPP data that can be quite useful for simple exploratory work. SIPP microdata are available on-line at the Census Bureau's Web site (http://www.census.gov/) and from the SIPP Web site (http://www.census.gov/sipp/). Those Internet sites offer two data access tools—Surveys-on-Call, which is part of the Data Extraction System (DES), and DataFerrett, which is part of the new Census Bureau Data Access and Dissemination System (DADS).

Surveys-on-Call provides access to SIPP longitudinal files for the 1988 through 1993 Panels and for wave and topical module files for the 1990 through 1993 Panels. Surveys-on-Call allows users to define microdata extracts from the SIPP public use microdata files. Users can choose data for selected years, wave files, core files, topical module files, or longitudinal files. They can also select variables of interest and use variables as selection criteria. For example, an analyst might want to extract recipiency information for females between the ages of 18 and 25 from Wave 5 of the 1993 Panel. Once defined, analysts can download those extracts to their own computers for analysis. Surveys-on-Call creates microdata extracts from the SIPP public use files only. It does not include any options for performing analyses on-line. On-line help is available at each step of the data-extraction process. Users are encouraged to explore the capabilities of this system by creating several small extracts.

SIPP data available on the Federal Electronic Research Review and Extraction Tool (FERRET) and DataFerrett include files from the 1996 Panel and the longitudinal files from the 1992 and 1993 Panels. FERRET is the product of a joint project of the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is a system enabling users to access and manipulate large demographic and economic data sets on-line. FERRET is designed to aid not only sophisticated researchers, but also reporters, students, government policy makers, and amateur statisticians. SIPP is one of several surveys available through FERRET and DataFerrett.5

red bullet   Published Estimates from SIPP
red bullet   SIPP Public Use Microdata Files
red bullet   Sources for Obtaining SIPP Microdata
red bullet   Other Sources of Information about SIPP

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4 This provision pertains only to materials authored and distributed by the Census Bureau or other federal agencies. It does not imply any rights to copy and distribute material published by any other party.

5 Among the current and future topics accessible through FERRET are employment, health care, education, race and ethnicity, health insurance, housing, income and poverty, aging, marriage, and the family. FERRET allows users to quickly locate current and historical information from survey sources, get tabulations for specific information they need, make comparisons between different data sets, create simple tables, and download large amounts of data to desktop and larger computers for custom reports.

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Page Last Modified: May 9, 2006


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